The Debate on Avant-Garde and Modernism—With Russian Futurism and Symbolism as an Example

Abstract The relation between avant-garde and modernism has always been an issue in dispute, partly because the hypothetical nature of the terms makes them hard to cover the all-encompassing artistic reality, and partly because discussion of their relation is always in a macroscopic perspective, which makes it difficult to produce detailed and concrete research results. This paper compares Russian futurism and symbolism to analyze the similarities and differences between avant-garde and modernism in terms of their ontological, artistic, and linguistic views in creation. It has, to some extent, obtained a relatively clear answer to the relation between avant-garde and modernism.